Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador, and migrated to the US when he was nine. He is the author of Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press) and the New York Times-bestselling memoir, Solito (Hogarth). Zamora was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University (Olive B. O’Connor), MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation (Ruth Lilly), Stanford University (Stegner), and Yaddo. He is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Narrative Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets campaign. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
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Unaccompanied: PoemsFrom"Cassette Tape"
Mamá, you left me. Papá, you left me.
Abuelos, I left you. Tías, I left you.
Cousins, I’m here. Cousins, I left you.
Tías, welcome. Abuelos, we’ll be back soon.
Mamá, let’s return. Papá ¿por qué?
Mamá, marry for papers. Papá, marry for papers.
Tías, abuelos, cousins, be careful.
I won’t marry for papers.
I might marry for papers.I won’t be back soon. I can’t vote anywhere,
I will etch visas on toilet paper and throw them from a lighthouse.
Unaccompanied: Poems:- Print Books
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SolitoA Memoir
People dust themselves. One by one, we stand. I dust myself. Look at the pinholes in the sky’s dark blanket. Stars twinkling. ¿Why do they blink like that? ¿Can they see the dirt under our feet? Like old newspapers. Crinkle. Crunch. Like walking on eggshells. Crack. The gallons of water in people’s hands. Slosh. We’re walking again.
Mice or bunnies sometimes cross our paths. Bats overhead. If I see them, I say they’re my pets. I do the same with the strangers: we’re all a family. Dad in front of me. Mom and Sister in front of him. The Six are my immediate family. I have so many faceless cousins, uncles, and aunts. Uncle #22 drifts off to the side to take a piss in the bushes. Aunt #6 steps to the side to take a sip of water. We push forward like a snake.
Solito:A Memoir- Print Books
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Unaccompanied: PoemsFrom"Second Attempt Crossing"
In the middle of that desert that didn’t look like sand
and sand only,
in the middle of those acacias, whiptails, and coyotes, someone yelled
“¡La Migra!” and everyone ran.
In that dried creek where forty of us slept, we turned to each other,
and you flew from my side in the dirt.
Black-throated sparrows and dawn
hitting the tops of mesquites.
Against the herd of legs,
you sprinted back toward me,
I jumped on your shoulders,
and we ran from the white trucks, then their guns.
I said, “freeze, Chino, ¡pará por favor!”
So I wouldn’t touch their legs that kicked you,
you pushed me under your chest,
and I’ve never thanked you.
Unaccompanied: Poems:- Print Books
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"Solito is an important, beautiful work. Zamora treks through his own memories and nightmares, revisiting a childhood that was lost. His account reads like a reporter’s notebook; everything is described meticulously so that it can be remembered. Zamora writes like someone who cannot afford to forget." —The New York Times
"It’s hard to reconcile the fact that this book hasn’t always been with us. How can something so essential and fundamental to the American story not already be part of our canon?” —San Francisco Chronicle [on Solito]
“Crafted with stunning intimacy . . . you’ll feel so close to the boy [Zamora] was then that you’ll think about him long after the book is done. It’s impossible not to feel both immersed in and changed by this extraordinary book.” —Los Angeles Times [on Solito]
This is a powerful writer, a brilliant writer, a necessary writer. Javier Zamora’s two absorbing books – watchful, incantatory poems and an unsparing memoir – tunnel deeply into the experience of crossing the border as a child, and then widen to consider those who leave and those who stay, the rent in the fabric of family and how it might be mended. His work transmutes testimony into art; whatever he turns his eye on next will also enlarge us.